True Detective Recap 6/21/15 – Season 2 Premiere ‘The Western Book of the Dead’

The first season of True Detective in 2014 was a major hit as it received high recognition, reviews, and praise. The long anticipated season 2 premiere aired Sunday night on HBO, with a new set of characters, setting, and most importantly – a new story.

True Detective is written as a anthology series, so each new season’s story will be completely different. Even though the story is different, season 2 began with similar chilling and aerial cinematography, just now over the Los Angeles area instead of the hazy lands of Louisiana, where season 1 was set.

In season one, True Detective slowly revealed each main character’s background, personality, and development from episode one to that season finale, and it seems season 2 will be doing the same thing.

Summary/Synopsis:

The opening begins with a field of takes with pink ribbons, very ambiguous setting, then switches to Detective Ray Velcoro, who is talking with his son before he drops him off to school.

Velcoro is a city of Vinci (town in Los Angeles in show) detective and looks troubled, stressed, and worried. His wife was beaten and raped some long time ago, she survived but a son was born 9 months later named, Chad. Velcoro and his wife (who is not shown yet) are divorced as she has married someone else and Velcoro is trying to gain more visitation rights with Chad. Velcoro claims to a lawyer handling his visitation rights that he is the father and shouldn’t have to give a paternity test, which is needed. The suspect for his wife’s rape is still unknown according to Velcoro.

A flashback shows a younger Velcoro, a cop at the time, go into a bar and receive the supposed true identity of the rapist from a gangster named Frank Semyon. He takes the identity and leaves, even though Semyon didn’t ask for anything in return.

In the present, Frank Semyon is the owner of a Casino in Vinci, and is prepared for a big day due to the impending deal he hopes to make with a major investor named Osip regarding a project he wants to propose to the state of California.

In the beginning of the day one of his men from his crew Blake Churchman shows him a newspaper story by reporter Dan Howser, which describes corruption in the city of Vinci. Even though Semyon’s name isn’t mentioned he is upset about the story and that it could lead to something bad for him, especially this deal. He tells Churchman, to notify Detective Velcoro about the journalist, which Churchman disapproves but notifies anyways.

Short clips throughout the episode show a black car driving on the highway, with a blindfolded man in the back of the car, and presumed unconscious. Eventually at night, he is dragged to a dirt patch road by a man, who’s face is unidentified and hidden.